Biography
David Clark is Professor and Chair of Experimental Psychology
Current areas of research include:
- David Clark is well-known for his work on the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders. With colleagues, he has developed original and effective cognitive-behaviour therapy programmes for four different anxiety disorders: panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and health anxiety (hypochondriasis).
- More recently, his team have developed internet based versions of the social anxiety and PTSD treatments. David has also played a key role in large-scale initiatives that aim to make evidence-based psychological treatments more widely available to the public. The first initiative involved training local clinicians to treat post-traumatic stress disorder following the 1998 car bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland. The second is the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, which aims to vastly increase the availability of psychological therapies for depression and anxiety disorders. David Clark is one of the principle architects of this programme which currently treats over 550,000 people a year, collects outcome data on 98% and places this information in the public domain in order to promote transparency about mental health outcomes. Around 50% of people treated in IAPT recover and two-thirds show clinically significant improvement.
- A broad overview of his work can be found in Layard & Clark's (2014) Thrive (Penguin).
Publications
